


Both Sides Now

by Moonsheen



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Cyborgs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Philosophy, Recovery, Robot Sex, Sexual Content, Sticky, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, no robodong, vaguely tantric sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:30:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7830406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonsheen/pseuds/Moonsheen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genji believes his body ruined beyond repair, relief, or even physical intimacy.</p><p>Zenyatta decides to prove him wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Both Sides Now

There is a storm coming to the mountain. Most of the brothers and sisters of the Shambali choose this time to power down and reflect on the sublime power of nature. All save one: Zenyatta is devoted to other studies that night, and Genji, against all his doubts, has chosen to follow him as he has chosen to follow no one else before in his life.

 

In the first hour, the monastery is quiet. Genji waits in his quarters by the small shrine he has built in the corner. There he has placed his family sword, his sash, and as much of his armor as he can remove. The cool mountain air is sharp on his exposed skin. He is used to the environmental controls of his exosuit, and the Shambali have no need for heat. He sits seiza: legs folded under him, hands curled in tight fists over his knees. He feels remarkably like a maiden in some ridiculous old play, waiting for some warlord to come and throw her down across the futon, but he is neither a virgin nor a maiden, and Zenyatta arrives like no conqueror. Instead he comes with an armful of pillows, a cup, a carafe full of peach juice, and a smaller tincture of oil.

“Your breathing is uneven, Genji. Are you sure you are well?” asks Zenyatta.

“I am,” promises Genji. He swallows, wanting to believe it is the truth. He drinks the juice with some care, trying not to look at his bared reflection in the lacquered cup. His prosthetic jaw catches quite a glint in the candles he’s left lit by the shrine.

“Your heart says otherwise,” says Zenyatta, without reproval of any kind. Just gentle observation. He settles across from him, allowing his knees to gently settle on the pillows he has laid down around them. His own body is warm, in the impossible way all omnics radiate heat. "What is on your mind?”

“I think you are being very generous right now,” says Genji, staring at his hands. One knuckle is still silver and gauntleted. The other, pale flesh, the wrist wreathed in a battered green tattoo. “Or you pity me. I don’t know which it is.”

“And what reason would I have to pity you, my dear student?”

“You wished to understand the connection between the human form and the human heart,” says Genji. He takes a deep breath and unfolds, so Zenyatta can see the full of him -- what there is left to be seen, beneath the flashing lights and strips of metal. “But there isn’t much to connect with now.”

“Oh,” says Zenyatta, as though surprised. “You have removed your armor.”

Genji blinks, despite himself. He thought Zenyatta might have noticed already. His injuries have been on the forefront of his own mind for so long. “Erm. Yes? That is what one does when you... have I misunderstood something?”

“No misunderstandings,” says Zenyatta, “but you forget that for me this is an entirely new experience. Are you uncomfortable? Do you require the armor for warmth? You should not suffer on account of my curiosity.”

At that moment, everything is hot. Genji lowers his head, overwhelmed. “No, I am fine. It’s just... “ He can’t quite find the words: You are only the second person to ever see how bad it is?

“This is all that I am now,” he manages, at least. Zenyatta places a hand on his one bared shoulder. It is warm and cold at the same time. He moves it up to the joining his neck. His fingers stop at the corner of his jaw, metal on metal, there. The tip of his index finger, however, touches real flesh.

“You are everything you have always been to me,” he says, “but if there is a difference, will you explain it?”

“I don’t I think I can,” says Genji, but he stumbles into that touch.

“Be at peace,” says Zenyatta, cupping his face. “Be at ease.”

  


The second hour is quiet. The storm outside shakes the wind chimes and rocks the bells. All Genji can hear the faint slide of metal on metal, as Zenyatta feels with great care along the links of his armored spinal connectors. Genji’s cybernetics are fitted to recognize pressure, however light. Even without his visor, he receives constant updates: Faint. Metal. Warm. Zenyatta is counting his chakra points, telling him their locations, their meaning. Genji has heard this many times before, even before he came to this place, and he has never listened quite so intently as when Zenyatta has explained it. Yet when Zenyatta’s fingers slip along the back of his head, pressing into tense scarred flesh that carries so much weight, both real and figurative, all those lessons vanish from his mind.

“I’m sorry, what was that again?” he asks. His breath sounds harsh to his own ears.

“It is of no matter,” says Zenyatta, pausing in his ministrations. His fingers tangle delicately in what is left of Genji’s hair. “Hm. There is tension here. I suppose it is quite a burdened part of you. Are you alright?”

“It has been some time,” admits Genji. It’s been so long since he’s felt anything besides nanites on his bared skin.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” says Genji, though when those fingers runs that hand over his cheekbone and lips, it aches impossibly. They’re so smooth. They’re so warm. “Please continue.”

  
Zenyatta does, paying particular care to the scarring close to where the prosthetics join with flesh. He studies Genji’s wrecked cheekbone. He ventures along Genji’s straining neck, and the implants that allow him to speak. He lays his palm over Genji’s scarred sides and stomach. He follows the metal tendons that carry nanites to all of them. Zenyatta’s finger brush his outer thigh, where flesh gives way to the cybernetic port that begins the rest of his leg, and Genji gives a particularly startled gasp. The warmth he feels in response to that is unexpected and almost strange to him. He almost doesn’t recognize it.

“Is something troubling you?”

“No,” says Genji, fighting breathlessness. He lets his head lull forward. Genji laughs, despite himself, his breath fogging the brilliant copper of Zenyatta’s neck connectors. “I… did not think that still worked.”   


 

On the third hour Genji is gasping, with a noise enough to match the wind. He lies on his back, sprawled on the pillows, fighting a collapse of limbs he had not thought he would ever experience again. His metal legs stay propped, his metal arm stays at his side, but nevertheless, he finds his thighs flushed and shaking as Zenyatta works a well-oiled finger into him.

It’s a narrow finger. The Shambali are all designed for dexterity and grace. The hard but warm metal presses carefully into him, with neither rough insistence nor shaky hesitation. It’s not unlike some of the more creative toys Genji utilized a lifetime ago, but he can feel Zenyatta’s wrist against his thigh and the warmth and hum of his processors close by. It’s nothing like he’s experienced before. He looks up along his body. It’s hard not to see the scars and patches from the implants along the way. It’s hard not to see how pale his own flesh is: ashen, like a corpse, in the places where it can no longer turn flushed and pink.

“Is that all right, Genji?” asks Zenyatta. A sharp breath eases him deeper. Genji rests his human wrist across his eyes and tries to steady himself.

“Yes. It’s fine,” he manages. “Please continue.”

Zenyatta’s hand stills. Genji hears, rather than sees, him lean over to observe his reaction.

“You are holding back,” he says, with that unerring perception that Genji once found infuriating. He pulls away. A high noise escaping from the back of Genji’s throat. No. Not yet. Not when it’s been so long-- “Is this not to your liking? You needn’t bear this out of obligation.”

“It is not what you think,” admits Genji, peering up from under the shadow of his tattooed arm. “My mind and soul are willing, master, but it is my body that has been my cage.”

Silence. Then a soft whirr of joints. Zenyatta hovers over him, head tilted to one side.

“No,” Zenyatta says, tapping his arm, “do not think of it in such a way. Transcendence is an elevation, not an escape. Do not think of your body as your limit. It is as much a part of you as anything else, and you are not a cage.”

“But I am limited,” says Genji, but he lets Zenyatta rest his hand over the one shielding his face. Pain, now. Not where Zenyatta has touched him, but behind his eyes, and deep in his chest. “There is much I have lost.”

“Then show me.” Zenyatta takes his other hand, so that he holds them both, gentle, the intent companionship, not restraint.

“But master, I--”

“Show me.” Zenyatta cups his face, though their hands remain collapsed at his side. The room has filled with light. The hands on his cheeks are humming bright constructs. They feel hot and impossibly good. “I am a student in this as much as you. Have no fear, and I will have none either. I would like to see you in whole.”

‘But I am not whole,’ Genji wants to say, but Zenyatta will not hear this. Zenyatta believes he is whole, and it is the belief Genji finds strange and intoxicating. Another set of spectral hands settle on Genji’s scarred chest, right above his desperately beating heart.

“I am yours,” Genji hears himself murmur. A third set of arms runs down his stomach to rest on his upper thighs.

“You are your own,” says Zenyatta, “and that is a magnificent thing.”

The hands wait there, until Genji lets them part. Until Genji lifts his hips and, with a courage he didn’t expect in himself, doesn’t close his eyes as those spectral fingers close around him, vibrating with song and awash in light.

  


In the fourth hour Genji tries not to cry out. He bites into his forearm, instead. As it’s the human one, there’s a bit of a sting -- but it is nothing to the rest. He doesn’t recall at what point he rolled over. The present is much more consuming: Zenyatta, one solid hand buried in him to to the knuckle joint. The other softly teasing his one remaining nipple. Before his reconstruction, Genji could never remember them being that sensitive, but now he has to try everything in his power not to writhe his way off the pillows. The rest of Zenyatta’s spectral hands have enveloped him. One strokes his head and jaw. Another rubs the back of his clenched hand. Still another has dipped below his stomach, massaging gently.

And all the while, Zenyatta tells him: “We are all of us made of the same components. The mind. The soul. The body. In these things we find harmony and conflict both. I admire humanity, for finding a means of connection that applies all three! It is truly a remarkable thing.”

Genji’s answer is cut off by a great groan. The wave of sensation hits him like a great wave, and it is not all in his mind.

  


In the fifth hour Genji finds himself on his side. It’s an easy position, his metal arm folded under himself. He tucks his leg close to his chest, and the spectral fingers vibrates in him with a strength that sounds a bit like a song, he feels it both inside him and all up his spinal implants. Zenyatta does not move terribly much. Genji registers nothing but that heat and the shadows shaking on the walls, moving him slowly along over a wave far more intense than the last.

  


In the sixth hour they rest. Genji drinks the rest of the peach juice. It’s gone cold. His human hand is still too shaky to manage the cup. He relies on his prosthetic one instead.  
  
“Forgive me, master,” he says, with as much of a smile as he can manage at the moment, “I am interrupting your studies.”

Zenyatta sits beside him, as serene as ever. “Nonsense. You are observing your physical needs.  It cheers me to see you pay them this much mind.”

Genji stares into his cup for a long time. He hadn’t thought of it in that way. He reaches up, to run his hand through his brittle hair, surprised a bit at how it tickles. He’s been surprised by a lot of things tonight.

“I would have thought such organic needs are beneath the teachings of the Shambali.”

“Nonsense,” says Zenyatta, with a cavalier flick of his hands that would have deeply irritated his sleeping brothers and sisters. “It is true to be one with the Iris is to relinquish worldly concerns, but how can one gain that ability without knowing the world in full?’

“Then I have known enough of the world to be considered a sage,” says Genji, smiling tiredly, “but it was not like this. I didn’t think it could be like this. I don’t know if I’ve given you an accurate experience.”

“Accuracy doesn’t interest me so much as the experience in of itself,” says Zenyatta, “and I have enjoyed this one. Have you?”

“Mm. More than I believed I ever could again,” says Genji. “Still, I must admit, I am concerned.”

“Share with me.”

“It seems you have placed a great deal of thought into what might please me,” says Genji, “but what would please you?”

Zenyatta folded his hands in thought. “I have already found a great deal of pleasure in this encounter.”

“In mind and heart, but what about body?”

“Ah. I understand your question, now,” says Zenyatta. “To you my body might seem as much an obstacle as you have assumed of your own, but I promise you, that is not the case. I find monitoring your sensory input quite a task when you are in this condition. It is not unlike when I establish a cognitive link with my brothers and sisters. Processing such an heavy influx of information is… quite pleasing to us.”

“I see,” says Genji, “and would I be able to provide this link? Through my suit? Like when we meditate together?”

“Hm,” Zenyatta tilts his head in thought. “My. That could be quite something. You pose an intriguing question. Would you like to entertain it?”  
  
“I would not bring it up otherwise.”

“I see,” Zenyatta clapped his hands together, with a click of metal Genji has grown so fond of in him. “In that case, I should recommend you take a bit more that that one drink! This might take some time, and I should hate that you go into it unprepared.”

“I am not so fragile,” says Genji, “but thank you.”

Still, he allows himself a light supper. For the first time, he appreciates the reminder.

  


Zenyatta sends the request for a link in the seventh hour. Genji sees it in the corner of his eye.  His implants allow for some interface with his internal systems, even without the visor. Genji taps his temple to accept it, and the omnic’s consciousness envelops him whole.

It’s not the first time Genji has done this. Early on his tutelage, Zenyatta introduced the exercise as an example of perspective. He’d wanted Genji to see himself as Zenyatta saw him, and so to that end they’d sat together in sister Sundatta’s peach garden. At the time they sat back to back and Zenyatta had offered him a piece of his mind. Now they sit facing each other, and Zenyatta offers him the whole.

Genji expects the shift. The doubling of his senses. The sudden lurch he discovers his own vision joined by another. It’s something like the overlay of a holographic screen. With his eyes open, he can see Zenyatta in front of him, their palms pressed together. He can also see his own face, shocked and suffused with sweat. The scars and his ridiculous expression embarrass him. He shuts his own eyes, but the denial of his own senses only make that picture stronger. The flood of information that comes with it is staggering: His core temperature. The temperature of his prosthetics. The exact BPM of his heart. The exact amount of breaths he has taken in the last hour. The exact location of each nanite port in his body. The temperature of the room. The temperature out in the hall. The fall of snow on the mountain. The number of flakes that gather on the field protecting the peaches from the cold---

“You are playing hide and seek with me,” laughs Zenyatta. “Come back, won’t you? I do like it when you are near.”

The comfort Genji takes from the tenor of his master’s voice is doubled over, too. Warmth at hearing it. Warmth at Zenyatta hearing him hear it. The easing of his heartbeat. The slowing of his breath. More the point, he registers the vibration in Zenyatta’s vocal processors. The conscious pitch of it. Fondness, a desire to be a calming presence, and a deep satisfaction that comes with success. It’s not smug or triumphant, it’s simply joyful.

Genji allows himself to return to the room and to his own body. Zenyatta’s waiting for him.

“It is true, omnics are beings that are formed by function,” admits Zenyatta. “For us, contentment was once defined as simply completing the task we were made for. There is an ease in purpose. To do what you have been tasked with is the most natural thing imaginable. To do what is beyond yourself…”

It’s not quite fear. It’s uncertainty. Escape. Pain. Loneliness. Rejection. Loss of body. Loss of self. Deep and shaking, processed through miliseconds. Endless questions. Endless pings with no reply. The slow realization that to continue on requires a new set of eyes. A new reality. The terrible pain of that which is new. The ache of recollection, that endless, clenching ache...

“Yes,” says Genji. “I remember.”

“So do I,” says Zenyatta, and that is when Genji truly understands the memories Zenyatta has allowed him to access are not Genji’s own.

Zenyatta accepts his bewilderment with a gentle amusement, cataloguing the biological aspect of the response with such a relish Genji forgets to stay startled. Really? You? Yes, yes of course. His brothers. Their sisters. They had a home, and then they did not. The task placed before them by the omnium was one they were unable to complete. An omnic processes gigabytes in mere seconds. The pain of not being able to complete one’s function was processed over and over thousands of years worth of incomplete command functions, all in the span of a moment. They traveled long and far, through lands ravaged by a war that had never been explained to them. They lost many of their own. Some to the war. Some to the journey. And some simply chose to discontinue their function. In that emptiness, over time, they found another purpose.

But we could not have done it with

Of course you could have

We could not have done it without knowing

You have always known

Knowing that ache

But must it always hurt?

There will always be loss.

Always?

But it means there will always be space for something new.

Zenyatta curls his fingers along Genji’s metal jaw, so that the tips curl behind his ear. The physicality rocks Genji back to the present. The pressure both on his jaw and in the flesh behind his ear is real and pointed.

“No, it doesn’t always hurt,” confirms Zenyatta, aloud, “but I respect the lessons learned through pain and loss as much as the ones learned through joy and understanding. Does this hurt, Genji?”

He moves his finger in a circle against the skin and implants he finds behind Genji’s ear. The gesture is simple, and nothing compared to what has already passed earlier, the memory of which still pricks at Genji’s mind and body, but linked as they are he feels everything in this slight touch. Zenyatta’s fingers are equipped with sensors of their own, ones that register body heat, pressure, responsiveness. Zenyatta feeds Genji that information. Genji, in return, offers him what he can: tension released, confusion, surprise, relief. Relief to be touched. After so long. After so little. Prickly warmth. Flush of blood. In answer, Zenyatta returns this with a distinct sense of satisfaction. Satisfaction with seeing the motion pleases him. Questioning if he would like more.

Yes, answers Genji with a physical nod. Yes. And here his thoughts gain a ragged quality. Zenyatta touches him and a great many things burst into his head: The memory of tying a band of cloth around his forehead for the first time. The feeling of wind pressing his hair back as he leapt along the garden walls in Hanamura. The smell of the cherry blossoms in early spring. The smell of the peaches in the garden. A blue dragon slamming him into a wall. The tug of medical equipment on his skull. A foreign exchange student draping her arm over his shoulders in a club. The glare of the arcade. Smell of ink. Sound of the little hammer as the tattoo artist drove the needle into his shoulder blade. Press of Zenyatta’s fingers there now. Sound of a heart monitor. A woman in white pressing her hand over his eyes. The last gulp of broth from a beef bowl. The warmth of the peach juice as he swallows it.

The wonder of standing on a mountain side. The blue expanse of the sky. Discovering a small tree growing in the wreckage of a Bastion unit. Brother Mondatta watching snow melt in his palm. The warmth of the construction chamber. The cold of the Siberian wastes. Falling down the mountain path. Trying out laughter, for the first time. Uploading the contents of a wrecked library into his databases. The first rainfall on his faceplate. Flight. The human heartbeat. The girl who tucked a flower into his neck joint. Hissing heat as a sword buries itself in the wall beside his head.

Their first confrontation in the streets of Numbani. Their last conversation in the peach garden. Laughter. Fear. Laughter. Hands on neck, chest, hip, thigh. Racing heart. Unsteady heat. The uncertainty of self. The uncertainty of soul. The uncertainty of the body. What am I now? What have I been? What will I be? What can I be? Is there a life for me, after all this? Is there a life for me now? Yes, of course. Warmth. Oneness. The Iris. Home. Forgiveness. Knowing. Of course, there is a place for you. There is a place for me. There is a place for all of us. And I’m here. I’m here, I’m

  


It is the eleventh hour when Genji emerges from the link, sore and strange, and collapses onto his back. The storm’s passed, sun is streaming in through the halls, and Zenyatta peers over him. Genji can no longer know his master’s exact thought sequence, but he can tell from his posture he is physically unaffected by the night’s exertions, though a bit worried. Genji can’t quite muster the energy to comfort him in a way meaningful and poignant. He settles for turning his hand in a feeble thumb’s up. It’s not a gesture he’s managed in some time. Zenyatta tips back in genuine delight, and outside one of the brothers has begun to ring the temple bells.

“The morning debates begin,” says Zenyatta. Despite the pep in his mannerisms, there is a certain slowness in his speech functions that Genji cannot help but feel a _little_ smug about. Not wholly unaffected, then. That’s something. Genji acknowledges the selfish thought, savors it, and lets it go. “I suppose my brothers and sisters will be expecting us. Do you care to join them, Genji? You are welcome, as ever.”

“With all my respect, master,” says Genji, “I understand now I am without limit, but I don’t think I can move.”

“Ah,” says Zenyatta. “I suppose that is to be expected. The physical form does have its quirks. My brothers and sisters can wait. I will stay here with you, if you will have me.”

“Master,” croaks out Genji. Zenyatta hands him another cup. Genji takes it in his bared hand, the feeling of lacquer on his palm is cool and real. “I walk in harmony when I am with you.”

“And I with you, my student,” says Zenyatta. “And I with you.”

  
  



End file.
